Wednesday, July 9th. The stay overnight at Lillesand was great! I could get enough sleep and got amazing views of the landscape early in the morning from top of the 100-meter hill.
I moved on, and thanks to the mostly flat terrain, my average speed was very good. I passed Birkeland and cycled towards Kristiansand. About 10 km from Kristiansand, I got a flat tire – again. I decided to exchange the hose instead of patching it. A close inspection of the tire revealed small and sharp stones inside of a rubber crack. The tire was damaged from gravel roads and a heavy loaded bike.
After 40 minutes of repair session on a parking lot, I was ready to continue my route and decided to replace the tire in Kristiansand. I spent some time there looking for bike workshops. This cost me a lot of time and my destination city of Mandal was still 60 km away.
I arrived very late in Mandal around 10:30pm. The local camping site was “full” and no shelter could be found in the city’s proximity. So I had to find a sleeping place quickly, otherwise I’d been in huge trouble.
After riding for an hour in complete darkness, around 1am, I found a small place near my road where it had just enough space to put my tent and hide the bike safely. So I spent the night there. I tried to be careful with “blind passengers” when camping in the wild – keeping the pannier bags closed as much as possible and opening the tent zippers for very short periods. Luckily, I found a peck in my tent before she could bite me 😅
126.45 km, 10h13m, 12.37 km/h, 50.21 km/h max